35th of Spring, 512 AV
Implacably, jet curtains draped the dying city. This was the fall of empire. The current of shrieks, crested by anguished froth, waxed over the shink of metal, sporadic concussions. These ranged from dull claps, budding in whips of oily, choking smoke, to bone-grating volcanoes of molten jade, entire blocks of tiled, domed roofs enveloped by flames. The columns swift to cave, sapped by termites of ember. They crumpled, sifting up grave dust and puking a char of corpses. Everywhere, the sickly reek of baking skin, stray cinders making candles of locks not yet gummed by red leaks of resin. The harpers would play of this, surely. The pithy shaking of mortar, scarred by a blind jealousy. There’d remain only a gasp of unruly ashes, left to brood over a field of bones.
There, the lanes washed with blood. That estuary dredged up from the gutter, canting over sullen rock. Dismal throngs of shriekers plaited over this frieze, vain in their jerking scurry. Hushed, fettering links of dread banished the cowerers to their husks of sanctum, where they bided among spiders, moaning and praying. Final, vapid dreams perished upon the crack of trembling lips.
And lofty on the ramparts, soldiers died. They always died, grim in defiant resistance, or weeping in cowardly defeat. The gods didn’t care, for they’d never understood the plight of a transient mortality. Dourly wrapped by bloody hauberks, by frayed, rended links of mail, they jostled their foes from the parapets, flung away ladders. They screamed like devils, halberds swinging crazily, mauls probing, blades pealing over livid scutums. That sigil, once proud, vanished. The pennants burned, just like their weary eyes. Though squealing steel, the medleys of barbed, bristling deluges seeking domicile in skewed cavity of gorgets, in the scrape of leather joints. The lonely revenant, an oblong keep shod by the char of ivy, brinked on breach. Near ruins of the gate, mighty oak shod by bronze, shivered at the drum of a ram, steely visage flanged by a freakishly tusked boar.
The cull would begin, soon.
Flares of hurled fire pots, lofted from heady spires, graced inky tapestry as if defying a larger solitude. The defilers were a shabby spill, chiding in their grunting intensity. Metal caps, fringed by fur. They lifted the behemoth with horny, gloved fingers, swung it as savages. Molten lead poured. The molds lay under callous boots, ungratefully peeling in the remains of tepid, umber agony.
Inevitability reigned. And soldiers died.
Ulric forced back stony tears for them, not merely for the glaze of empty eyes, but the loss of their names. They were like hanged men. They immolated in frenzy against a presage that even he, the soothsayer of defiance, couldn’t usurp with the nudge of a viper’s rapture. That soldiers, raging against the augury even he, the diviner of defiance, couldn’t usurp. The cruel augury that men perished, and were forgotten.
Higher, roosting on the crenels of a tower, he glared over the grim harvest from afar. The legion of crows attended him in their hundreds, bunching over the broad sweep of his shoulders, over pocked, sedentary blocks. They cackled, always mocking though clad in a pauper’s tawdry finery, the gold of beady eyes flashing in the faraway frenzy of grinding bones. There’d already been a culling, with its vagaries of red, flapping shreds, the inevitable jut of bone splinters. They lay in a weeping carpet, twisting like talismans of lobstered metal. Hungry beaks clacked over meaty slivers, ushering in the medley of sordid banquet. The rip of marbled fat, pink tongues lolling under empty sockets.
His eyes were gaunt, limned by ruddy hues that winked from the coal-black depths of a ruthless, dead fervor. They were leaden, bulging grotesquely, even from the rigidity of his jaw. The ridges of his cheeks bared morosely, flecked by whiskers. The scar of lips tugged in bleak refrain. For him, there was but lonely, grieving vigil, for if he awakened from this dream he’d surely inscribe their names in his tome of the fallen. He was merely a vessel of purpose, vulgar and brutal, yet doused by a slurry of noble, beckoning duty. His body coldly clad by layers of scale and plate, daubed black by the antiquity of flames, scarred and dented. They encased him, like a reliquary caging the very fibers of his soul in a stark reluctance of task.
And yet, he was tarred by the perfidy of his inaction, for he hadn’t yet plunged down there, to bolster the dying. Maybe join them, for what it’d do him. Fear roiled, bubbled from his chests. At least I’d have fought, he scowled, lips twisting.
Ulric bided like a glacier, cleft chin brushing over the silver inlay of a clasp, heavy mantle of fur violently shifting in his wake. The peacock’s splay of fingers dragged through spiky hair, clumsy with the clank of gauntlets. “Drawing breath is a meager curse,” he grunted, “But dying, now that’s tragedy for you.” Shifting, restless in their gorging fury, the crows only mocked his impudence. Ignoring them, he focused on the faraway, madly skirling pipers, the rattling hum of disembodied chants, melding with the dreary sledging of vast drums wrapped by curing hides. They played a dirge.
And soldiers died.
